Feast And Famine

• Nina Dalton, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2010

Feast and Famine
It smelled hot and sticky and rancid. Mrs. Hollandbosch perished. They threw her body off an hour ago.
The train didn’t stop.
I haven’t sat or slept for at least three days. My legs could no longer support my weight, but we are tightly squeezed in the carriage and there is not room to even sit.
Tom and Anita are beside me. Tom’s nearly twelve and he’s keeping his head for little Anita, keeping her entertained. He tells her stories of “Das Rotkaputchen”, Little Red Riding hood, and his own “The Princess, the Feast, and the Thief.” A man stands beside me, his furred coat rubs against me and it tickles. The man occasionally expounds a small cough, and his skin is dotted with sweat. He looks like an apple core, with a yellow face and large red mouth: a sunken, sallow apple core with eyes dead and decomposing. Tommy whispers his story into Anita’s ear and she squeals. The man turns around and looks at us disdainfully, his shoulders held high – as if he weren’t a Jew like us.
I spend most of my time thinking about life before the war; of the Farm and Mutter and Vater. We had sheep and a small piglet that was mine. The heavy air reminds me of our basement where we kept preserved apples and jellies and sauerkraut. My stomach aches, and I think about our kitchen table; Ma and Vater and little Anita and Tommy and I all sitting and eating; feasting on each other’s company, of good will and wishes and fortunate circumstance.
Then the sheep got skinny and the pig got skinny and we got skinny. Then there were no pigs anymore, or sheep, or preserves. I’m not sure I’m going to be here much longer either. Now, there exists nothing but an empty, deadened landscape with parallel tracks that stretch past the horizon, guiding us like herded cattle from feast to famine.
When they took us away, soldiers loaded us onto the train with greedy eyes and open mouths, taking watches and hats and jewellery, taking what little human dignity we had left. Hot bodies pressed up beside me and with deep snow underfoot, I took one last look at the old place and turned toward my future.
I try and remember that view now but it is difficult. All I can see is our farm fields being littered with corpses. Three others have died – a boy who wasn’t a Jew, and another mother, and her infant child. In the heavy air I think it would be so easy to slip away, so easy to sleep, but my stomach is gnawing. I am so hungry. I am hungry for decency, for compassion, for humanity. I am hungry for home.